So with Xmas around the corner and the 9 year old saying his old Slate PC is very slow and 'wishing it would play Ark' better I have decided to buy/make a gaming system. This is where I need advice from the lovely bit-techers. What can I build for £500, I don't need a keyboard, mouse, monitor or a HDD or Windows, so purely down to Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Case and PSU. It's not going to be supa-dupa system, but something that is good enough to run Ark with it looking good and not jumping frames. Not interested in over clocking and watercooling, so as for a case, anything will work that looks good and is green or with green lights (he loves green!) I am rather out the loop when it comes to GFX and CPU's so any advice is great fully appreciated.
Well, that currently depends on the game, the TV I will plug it in to is 1080i but for the budget I know that isn't going to be an option. I tend to reduce settings depending on the game, IE Minecraft works well on a moderate settings where as ARK is totally slow at 1024x768.
At that resolution, you're more CPU bound than anything. A new monitor would be far, far better to throw into the budget. You need a seriously fast CPU at such a low resolution, as the GPU doesn't even get to stretch its legs.
How's that work then? Surely all graphics are processed by the card/chip and the processor picks up the slack if required. Like I said I'm out of touch with things. I don't really want add another screen to the desk that everything is on/under, the 42" TV is used for the XBOX etc.... the All in One PC next to it is used for watching 'game related videos' (as he puts it). So another screen would just get in the way and I would much prefer one focused screen, otherwise he will most likely be trying to play 2 games at once
If you look at the today only on scan bundles you can normally get an i5, mobo case ram and psu for 400
The thing is when you start looking at ebay, things seem really cheap, for example how would a machine like this stack up: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ULTRA-FAS...-AMD-197307-/141629958189?hash=item20f9cda82d
I respectfully disagree . As long as you're hitting 60FPS, who cares about CPU speed. And it today's world, you won't find a CPU that won't do that. That eBay PC would be painfully slow with its 240. Since your budget is £500, how about: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro-ATX Motherboard £40 AMD FX 6300 £82 Corsair Desktop Memory 8GB (2x4GB) £36 600W EVGA 80PLUS Power Supply £35 Palit GeForce GTX 970 £253 Antec P50 Cube Case £50 Comes in at about £496 - and I think your friend will be rather pleasantly surprised at how fast his games are running all of a sudden!
Petes recommendations are significantly better than the crap on ebay you linked. They all say " plays the latest games" yeah, at 800x600 on low . Avoid the ebay systems.
Yes, I realise that, after looking at the benchmark of the ones on ebay Pete's recommendation is by far far far far far better!
You need to remember that any ready built rig anywhere is going to be the cost of the parts it takes to make them and the labour for making the rig on top. That Ebay rig is a ton of crap thrown together and then sold with all sorts of BS patter. I think Pete has nailed it with that set of parts, though I would change the GPU to this as it's better and only costs another £5. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-...6000mhz-gddr5-1010mhz-gpu-2560-streams-dp-hdm
A good alternative card, but has pros and cons: PROS: Faster Cooler running CONS: No PhysX support Consumes ~130W more (PSU can still handle it fine though) Not as overclockable
Agreed with what was said above, do not buy that ebay system. the system Pete posted will not only be actually really fast but should also last a good few years with no really problems. Only problem I can see is the upgrade path but at that price something has to give and also by the time you want to upgrade it things should have moved along quite a bit anyway.
Cheers for the info guys. I have found the case I will be using: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/aero...atx-itx-with-2xusb-30-and-side-window-w-o-psu The little man loves green and he will love this case So looking at the options, what do you guys think of this spec? Sapphire Radeon NITRO R9 380 Dual X OC AMD Graphics Card 4GB £170 MSI A88XM GAMING Micro-ATX £80 Aerocool X-Predator Cube Case - Green £65 A10 7870K Black APU, Socket FM2+, Quad Core Processor £105 Silverstone Strider 500W Full Modular 80+ Gold Power Supply £70 Corsair Memory Vengeance Jet Black 16GB DDR3 £70 Total being £560, savings could be made on the PSU (a friend recommended it) Also the case is a little pricey compared to that Pete J linked too, but it's very green! Any comments on the above and if it will be good for the next 2/3 years?
Personally I would stick to Pete J's build but with the r9 390 and the green case, an AMD A series is pointless if you are using a dedicated GPU. Case wise I actually have the cleaner looked version of the case you choose http://www.scan.co.uk/products/aero...with-window-and-green-and-black-interior-w-o- and can highly recommend it.
Make sure that 390 will fit in that case and if it does use the CPU Pete Recommended and put the money saved on the GPU (390 over the 380)
I second this. Built a very cheap rig for my son using an A8 processor intending to use the APU, and while the APU gives respectable performance for what it is, I still ended up chucking in a 750ti card, and in that use case the APU makes little sense, the main benefit is lost. an i3 is a better investment if you're going discrete graphics IMO. But for what it's worth, the A8 with the 750ti gives good (stutter free) performance at 1080p in all the lego games, eurotruck sim 2 and project cars.
I completely forgot to mention, you should look around the Bit Tech marketplace! Speed has a 970 going for £211 (or £200 if you're going near Bristol) bdigital has an i5 2500k and Asus p8H61-I M-ITX Motherboard going for £115, as well as having a decent 500W PSU up for grabs Not to mention that I also forgot that you'll probably need a CPU cooler! Quite frankly, any cheap one that isn't the stock one will do.